READING, Pa — History comes home.
“Reading had probably the largest volunteer fire company in the country — 10,000 members during its height,” said Richard Boyer, a retired city fire chief.
From manpower to horsepower.
“The early apparatus were pulled by the firemen,” Boyer said. “As they got heavier, naturally, you had to add horses.”
There are many significant signs of the passage of time and history for the Reading Fire Department and the Reading Area Firefighters Museum.
“1771, that is five years before the Declaration of Independence,” Boyer said.
But now, across decades, many miles, and a Sotheby’s auction near Miami…
“We’re still shocked that we were able to do that, but it’s coming,” he said.
“It” is Berks County’s first first motorized fire truck — a 1911 American LaFrance Type 5 Double Tank Combination fire engine.
“You can feel the emotion,” Boyer said.
By way of a flatbed truck from the American LaFrance Corporate Collection in south Florida, the engine is once again back home at the former Liberty Fire Company’s station at South Fifth and Laurel streets, where the museum is now located.
It may be tired from the long journey, but it’s looking like a beaut nonetheless.
“Once you get to be a hundred and some years old, you don’t do too much running anymore,” he said.
How do museum leaders surmise they got the winning bid? History buffs with heart, they said.
“We just had a feeling that a lot of the bidders knew where it should go and didn’t try to outbid us,” Boyer explained.
History, heart and a return home for the first engine that did.
“I really started to think in detail about history,” Boyer added. “We’re still uncovering things all the time.”
The museum created a GoFundMe page to collection donations for covering the cost of buying the fire truck and transporting it back to Reading.